


A Bird No Bigger Than A Heart

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Transformation, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Fix-It, Post Page 750
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-23 04:11:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11395095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: Tuuri Hotakainen is dead, but no one is going to settle for that - not Tuuri herself, not her grandmother, not Sigrun.





	A Bird No Bigger Than A Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Solanaceae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/gifts).



> Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write for you! ♥

Tuonela stretched endlessly and bleakly under a dark sky studded with stars. The Swan alighted on the water with a graceful bend of her neck, beckoning Tuuri down. She fluttered for a moment, then, finding to her surprise that the flight had exhausted her, followed suit, landing on one of the rock islets protruding from the water throughout. The Swan drifted nearby, and bent her pitiless eyes on her, but did not say a word, and did not ask her to follow again.

In the water, shadowy and only in the ripples of the Swan's wake, Tuuri could make out human figures. The sleepers she would go to join soon, she expected; as soon as she changed back into her human form. A heavy tiredness had already settled into her bones, but the Swan drifted further away without a look back, and eventually became a white speck against the mountain in the distance, small as the North Star overhead.

Tuuri waited, unsure what was meant to happen next, fluttering her wings and tail, and tucking a stray feather into place. She felt strangely calm, all things considered, and left to her own devices for the moment, her thoughts began to wander.

Dying hadn't been so bad. 

Apart from the voices in her head. Apart from the realization that no one was looking out for her. Had she known… she'd have made Reynir tell Onni. Had she known, she'd never have laughed about Onni, or called him a coward, or a piss-head. 

Had she known, she'd never have left Keuruu, or… at least she could have made herself be satisfied with the options available to her. She could have gone to Mora, or maybe to Iceland, have seen the world and still been safe. Safer than in Keuruu, perhaps. 

No use now thinking about it. Remorse was pointless now. 

Apart from that, it _really_ hadn't been too bad. 

Apart from the sting of icy salt water rushing breath by breath into her nose, her mouth, pouring down her throat into her lungs as she struggled to stay under, not give in to the surface and the promise of life that held only becoming trapped and desperate. Apart from the fire inside her chest for lack of air, the black spots rising in her vision like the bubbles she breathed out. 

Apart from the desperation in Onni's eyes when he tried to follow and inevitably fell back. 

Apart from thinking what the others might be doing now. Lalli would find comfort with Emil, she was sure. Sigrun… Sigrun knew losing people, but that probably made nothing better. And it made nothing better for Tuuri, either. She had just died. She was allowed to be selfish now of all times, wasn't she? 

She wanted to be alive, to have enough breath and courage to tell Sigrun what she felt. She'd meant to do that when - if - she was in the clear, but it was useless to speculate and regret now. No one had looked out for her. And at least she'd known Sigrun at all. At least she'd been able to see parts of the world that no one had seen for 90 years. 

It really made nothing better. 

Tuuri sighed and tucked her head under one white wing. Until the Swan came back and told her what would happen next, she'd try and sleep. 

* * *

The trees thinned on the downslope to the shore. Tuuri's footsteps skidded down to a level stretch of ancient road, and then to the beach. Sigrun could see that she had slowed in view of the fjord. Darkness was already obscuring the opposite shore, and stars hung thick in the sky; the sun had set. Through the gloom, she could only barely make out a thin figure by the waterline, hunched over on his knees. 

Lalli. 

He was dripping wet when they reached him, hunched over and gasping for air with his open mouth the only visible thing between the hair plastered over his face. In his arms - Sigrun came down heavily in the snow when she saw, her knees refusing service for just long enough to still land on her arse - Tuuri lay, just as wet, but her eyes were closed, her face slack and white in the falling dark. 

Sigrun was dimly aware of Emil standing at her shoulder, while Mikkel plowed over to try and pull Tuuri from Lalli's grasp. They struggled for a moment without speaking, until Lalli's fist came down hard on Mikkel's ear and Mikkel reeled back, but not for long. He succeeded eventually by hoisting them up together, and when Lalli gave no more resistance, he - still wordlessly - began walking back on the now well-trodden path they'd come, carrying them both. 

* * * 

"No one looked out for you? Ungrateful child, who do you _think_ sent the Swan? She does not come for everyone, you should know that. If no one had looked out for you, you'd be standing in line for Tytti's ferry to wait your turn, if you ever found the way yourself at all after walking into the sea." 

That voice.

Hands cupped around Tuuri, extinguished the backdrop of starlight through her eyelids, and lifted her up. Tuuri's eyes flew open.

"G-Grandma?" 

"Who else! What were you thinking, Tuoni himself coming to greet you? I'm _sorry_ if I am not the welcoming committee that you expected. I had to talk to you." 

Tuuri fluttered her wings, her feet scrabbled for purchase in her grandmother's palms. 

"B-but… why are you awake?" 

"I am a mage, child!" If her grandmother had sounded exasperated before, she was now at the end of her temper, so quickly, and so much like Lalli. She hadn't really changed at all; she looked exactly as she had before. "And unlike you or your parents, I had a way to bargain myself out of sleeping. The Swan has paperwork enough to last her forever, and with only Kielo for help, she all but kissed me for my offer. It gave me a chance to look out for you, at least. Goodness knows all three of you needed it; if any of you should have been born immune that was you and your nuisance wanderlust. But dying - of the Rash! - with three of us trying to keep you safe - that takes talent."

Ensi's sharp eyes narrowed to a sliver of silvery grey like a puukko knife. "But you are not staying. I am not letting the Rash take any more victories over our family; you are going back to fix what you broke, and you are going back to life." Her tone brooked no objection. 

" _How?_ " Tuuri felt herself shrinking from the withering gaze. "Grandma, I drowned… drowned myself. I have no body to go back to. I couldn't let the Rash win."

"Bah," Ensi said. "Would you have done it if the troll hadn't gotten you?"

Tuuri shook her head. 

"So the Rash won. But drowning did not stop others - and worse than drowning. If you cannot figure it out, perhaps you deserve being here. I will see to the rest; I owe you recompense for my mistakes if nothing else. Have Lalli call me when it is time. But now - back you go!" 

Ensi's hands opened suddenly and with the briefest caress, and Tuuri wheeled upward into the air. The stars rushed closer, a pathway of clouds and gleaming lights, and wings beat all about her. 

* * *

No one had quite slept, and as soon as morning broke, they set to work again. Sigrun made her way down to the water. The wind and waves of the past night had calmed, and left the beach covered in broken floes and shingles of ice. 

The bird - tiny and white - hurled out of the sunrise and slammed into Sigrun's chest out of nowhere as she was working. She nearly dropped the stack of ice in her arms, and it took her a moment to find the little creature in the snow, where it lay stunned and white on white in one of Tuuri's small footsteps leading up to the waterline - until Sigrun curled her good hand around it and slipped it into her coat pocket. She could feel the tiny body quiver with exhaustion even through the thick leather and wool of her gear, but before she had reached the campsite, it stuck its head out, and fluttered upward to her shoulder. It crawled under her hair and tucked itself between her jawline and her throat, a spot of warm plumage against the chill morning air. 

"That's how it is?" she asked quietly. The thing would probably give her mites or fleas or gods knew what, but she couldn't make herself chase it off. Something stayed her hand. "Alright, you cuddle up there for a bit, get warm, and then go on your way." 

Back at the the campsite, she set the ice next to the tank, near Emil, who sat with red-cried eyes, combing Tuuri's hair, and Lalli, whom someone had wrapped in a couple of blankets while he was dozing restlessly, leaning on Emil's shoulder. It was stupid, if anybody bothered asking Sigrun. They ought to burn the body like the tank had burned, and move on, and take the ashes with them for Tuuri's brother. 

Mikkel, however, insisted that the body remain, and that they needed to try and preserve it. He had performed a cursory examination before Sigrun had set out, peeling down the clingy, wet material of Tuuri's turtleneck to reveal the telltale scabs of the Rash on her neck, and ascertaining that she had drowned before letting the fabric snap back into place. 

Sigrun looked away, tilting her head to study her little passenger instead. The bird had tucked its head under its wing; it almost seemed like it didn't want to look at the dead girl either. 

Her heart gave a curious lurch at the thought. 

"I don't get why she didn't tell us," Sigrun picked up the thread she'd cut short earlier. "Not like we weren't expecting it to happen sometime soon." 

Emil made an angry noise. Sigrun still found it hard to believe that he'd been so gullible to believe their pretense, but at least it had let him have some days that didn't involve fretting and worrying over Tuuri. Sigrun doubted she would have appreciated Emil's attention, especially if it was bound to come to nothing, but she found she didn't have the resolve to deal with him at the moment. None of them had truly come to terms with it. 

Couldn't have. It'd only been hours. Only the bird cast a beady eye in Emil's direction, and fluttered over to sit on his knee, tilting its head at him, and gave a chirp. 

"I expect she was terrified. It explains her choice at lea -," Mikkel rumbled before stopping himself to stare at Emil and the small bird. His voice was dispassionate but uncharacteristically quiet, without any of the resonance it usually held, he blinked once and shook his head as if to drive away some unwelcome thought. "Drowning is unpleasant, but as far as I can tell, she did not suffer for long." 

Then he excused himself to draft a report to the Nordic Council, adding, under his breath, "If we survive to deliver it." 

Sigrun let him go, and returned to the water to pick up more sheets of ice to bed Tuuri on. If she didn't keep busy, she'd scream. 

* * *

The bird stayed with Sigrun over the day after its stint with Emil, when it didn't sit in Lalli's hands or crawled inside his scouting hood. Lalli, back awake, seemed a little less on edge then, sometimes sitting with his hands cupped around the little ball of white feather; once he even let Reynir join them as if to seek someone else's expertise. His face stayed puzzled and incredulous even then, and eventually he set the bird into a leafless bush with a dismissive hand-gesture toward the forest. 

It came back to Sigrun instead.

"I have just about enough of it," Mikkel said, watching them. "Get rid of that animal, Sigrun. We have no use for a pet or a mascot. If nothing else, the cat will eat it, and I believe we have all had enough of death for the time being." 

She ignored him, and Mikkel ignored her in turn, after that, although Sigrun resolved to keep an eye out for Pusekatt when she could. 

They had postponed marching indefinitely - a short amount of indefinitely; none of them wanted to miss the boat - to have all of them process the shock of Tuuri's death, and sat gathered around the gas cooker for at least some meager warmth. No one, when Sigrun glanced around the circle, was looking up; they all clung to their own thoughts. Dimly, it occurred to her that she ought to be angry - with herself for letting it happen, with Tuuri for running from them, with Mikkel for not taking better care of her arm - but unlike the morning of the battle, she didn't have any energy left to yell at anybody, especially when she should be the main recipient of that yelling.

No one else talked. They had never been less of a team, not even in the very beginning when they'd just been introduced. The heart had been ripped out of them, Sigrun dimly thought, and not only out of her own chest. 

"One of the mages on my first team wasn't immune," Sigrun volunteered at last, when it was that, or socking someone in the jaw for no reason. The bird, then clawing into the binding of her glove, chirped and tilted its head at her, and she could feel bright eyes on her face. "I wasn't Captain then, I was only a recruit myself, but after she got it, I left her my gun when no one else did. Just saying, I'd have left Tuuri mine. Or done it for her. She shouldn't have had to go alone." She fuzzed a finger through the crest of feathers on the little bird's head, almost like Tuuri's hair had been. The bird closed its eyes. 

"It is something that everyone does alone," Mikkel replied. "And your bird friend certainly is not her, as much as Reynir believes otherwise, serendipitous arrival or not. I am not saying that nothing of her persists, mind you. Physics dictate that something must - but I highly doubt that it would take possession of a bird."

"Did he say that? Do you _know_ that?" Sigrun grumbled. "She's a Finn, Finns are weird." Even so, she did not really believe it. If whatever the Finnish gods had given their people instead of a proper fylgja had come back, oughtn't at least Lalli figure out what was going on? 

Mikkel sighed, but he said nothing else. The sense of triumph for one-upping him didn't come. She was tired, and her arm hurt, and Tuuri was dead. 

* * *

They left her behind in the tank a day later. 

Sigrun could still see the image of Tuuri behind her eyelids, in her soft grey sweater, her hair combed free of ice and salt into a side-swept fuzz by Emil, and the broken family portrait tucked under her hand before they packed her into a bed of snow and ice. If they failed to pick her up and any future explorer found her, her expedition file lay on the driver's seat. 

In there, Tuuri would be safe from scavenging animals or passing trolls. She looked like she was sleeping, and would for a while, if the weather held. Mikkel kept hoping that the crew of the rescue ship, on the way from Horsens to Øresund Base, might be convinced to stop by Vejle Fjord and pick her up to have a body for a proper burial. By then, he said, she would not even be a health hazard any longer, any infectious material having died with her or shortly after.

Lalli had found his own way of honouring her memory. He had found a pine tree - rare in the leafy forest they were in - pruned some of the lower branches, and carved an oval free of bark; it was running with sticky sap, but the incisions that Sigrun could read, she approved of. 

_T K-V H_ one read in Lalli's spiky letters, the other spelled out the dates of Tuuri's birth and death. Lalli stood by solemnly and only gave Sigrun a look when she laid a hand on his shoulder. "Good work," she said, and, fidgeting with the straps of the pack, turned to go. When she looked back he was kneeling, with his forehead against the tree trunk, for all the world looking like he was trying to wring comfort from a stone. 

She forced herself to go on. He would catch up when he was ready. 

And still, it seemed wrong to leave. Sigrun's bird fluttered anxiously as they began marching north. Sigrun could not fault it - her own heart was fluttering painfully in her chest when they went around a bend in the road and their vehicle passed from view. 

It seemed wrong to leave. _Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong._ The word rose like an alarm from Sigrun's mind, and all she could do was to put one foot in front of the other. 

* * *

"We have to do _something_ ," Mikkel translated for Reynir on their first rest stop on the road. The bird was pecking at a fingertip of gruel that Sigrun had swept from her bowl, and she swore that it gave Mikkel a hopelessly disgusted look. 

If she hadn't been so heartsick, worn, and thoroughly exhausted from the strain of walking in spite of her impulses and keeping her food down, Sigrun might have laughed at the fuzzy little thing.

They had crept along the shore and up onto the bridge spanning Vejle Fjord, perhaps halfway across the water, before Sigrun was too exhausted to push herself onward. After checking her temperature, Mikkel declared that they'd make camp for the night so Sigrun could rest. For the most part, she was more than ready to follow his orders, only her mind wouldn't shut up, so she seized the moment.

"That's what Freckles thinks?"

"Yes. He says he does not know what, but something, and that there is still hope to bring her back." If Mikkel sounded like a wounded animal, with no pretense to hide it, then Sigrun felt like a rush of icy water swept her off her feet. 

"Tell him to knock it off. Lalli is magic, and Tuuri is his family - and if he can't - if _anyone_ could, it'd have been done. She's not the first person the Rash took. We got 90 years of that. The cure was a dud that only sent the ghosts on our trail. This is a dud, too. It's over. Sorry, Freckles."

Reynir's face fell when Mikkel translated Sigrun's words back at him, and if she'd been any less sick, she might have dangled him off the bridge by his feet for his involvement in all of this. If he hadn't been so idiotic to hide in a crate and ship himself into the Silent World, she'd never have had to put her arm on the line. She'd have been able to keep the slithering troll from getting under the tank in the first place, and it would never have had the chance to bite Tuuri. 

"This is your fault," she muttered darkly in his direction. Mikkel didn't translate it. 

The sky was still light when Sigrun settled down to sleep. The bird crawled against the pulse point of her neck and quieted with a sleepy chirp. She cupped her hand around it without even thinking, and closed her eyes. 

* * * 

Tuuri didn't have to wait long. She tired easily and fell asleep quickly in her bird form, while Sigrun, human-shaped, was immense and loud, and it took Tuuri's every mastery over her instincts to not simply flutter away - to Lalli, who was quiet and slight and careful, and would never roll over in sleep and almost crush her. 

But at least in dreams she'd found she could do something about it, if she tried hard. She woke up in the formless place she thought might have been hers once, but what mattered was that her bird shape could grow and change until she looked down at a human body, and she could dare and make the leap that sent her across the narrow stretch of dark water at its edge into another presence. There, she could sit in a patch of summer flowers riddling the waving grass in the dream at the edge of a fjord. A small town sat a good distance away at the shore, and the mountains swept to heights that seemed to scratch at the sky itself. Clouds cast racing shadows on the water. Deep, warm tones lay like honey and amber over the scene. 

After all she'd heard, it only made sense for this to be one particular place, belonging to one particular person, and she no sooner faded into the meadow than Tuuri had finished looking around, her red hair threaded in between the flowers, her eyes still closed. 

"Sigrun? Sigrun." 

Sigrun groaned and sat up, rubbing her eyes. "What?" she said, sounding irritable like any time she was woken up from sleep by some distraction or disturbance. And then her eyes lit on Tuuri, and she said again, "What." 

"Hi," Tuuri said, and immediately felt stupid for it, but the feeling was replaced by a rush of exhilaration when Sigrun grabbed her and pulled her down in the grass like she never meant to let go again. Sigrun's heart beat steadily against her chest - perhaps a little quickly - and she radiated warmth from underneath the rich blue Viking tunic she was wearing. Tuuri nestled against her. 

"I'm sorry," Tuuri said at last. "I-i… I couldn't say goodbye. If I hadn't done it then I'd never have… and I heard what you said - I heard every word you said about the mage who was infected. But I couldn't let anybody have my blood on their han-" 

Her words subsided when Sigrun kissed her until they were both breathless, and Sigrun pulled back, her face soft and strangely sad, and touched her fingers to Tuuri's lips.

Tuuri's breath caught; almost on instinct she pressed a kiss against Sigrun's digits. "Sorry. I didn't know it… that you..."

"Stop apologizing; you're dead, I can't be angry with you. And yeah. Yeah, I was. Took you dying for me to figure it out, but I figured it out."

"I'm not. I'm not dead." Tuuri repeated. "At least not... completely. Reynir is right - I've been with you the whole time… my Grandma told me to find a way back. And I-i… I know what she wants me to do, I only don't know _how_ to do what she wants me to do. I'd meant to ask Lalli, but he's not asleep right now, and when he is, he's not letting me into his area. He doesn't even really believe it's me. I don't think he wants the world outside to exist right now, so he isn't even looking outside his barrier… and I don't know how to find Onni. I can't ask Reynir to take me, because Onni is going to be so upset with him for lying, and if he hears about Grandma's idea and it doesn't work, I don't want him to have any false hope, and anyway… I'm not a mage, so... " 

"Then how did you get here? And why me?" 

"Finns all have some magic," Tuuri replied. "But not all of us are powerful enough to be mages. Maybe it's because I'm… not really alive either."

"Huh."

"And we're… close. Physically. I'm sleeping right there with you. And I guess… after… that… since you're in… you like me. A-and you're sick. I've heard Onni say once that that sometimes lets people do things they can't otherwise, because you're closer to death. And I saw Mikkel's medical log when I packed up the books and papers for walking; he thinks you have septicaemia." 

Sigrun was quiet for a while. She probably tried to process it, Tuuri thought, but even so her hand never stopped trailing circles through her hair. "So what do we do?"

Tuuri began to explain. 

* * * 

"You seem better this morning," Mikkel remarked while he was busy pulling the tent pegs of cracks in the road and folding it up to stash away in the wheelbarrow. The sky arched wide and blue overhead, and their breath stood in white clouds before their mouths. 

Between that and knowing Tuuri was still with them, she could have kissed Mikkel for insisting on the treatment of Tuuri's body, rather than having it the Viking way. 

"I feel better," Sigrun said. "A bit. That rest _really_ helped, and perhaps your meds are kicking in, if they're good for anything at all. We're going to get out of this crap town today, finally." She looked around, finding Emil and Reynir standing at the railing and staring back at the shore they'd walked along the day before, for a moment wondering where Tuuri had gone until the truth hit her. She cleared her throat, thinking back to the dream instead. She had to believe it hadn't just been a flight of fancy, some way to make her brain come to terms with Tuuri's death. "And I need to talk to Lalli. Where'd the Twig run off to?" 

Mikkel pointed ahead. "Scouting, and your bird went with him. But I doubt you and he can strike up much of a conversation, or could even if you shared enough language." 

"It's important." 

"I have no doubt." 

"I dreamt about Tuuri. Reynir was right. There is a chance, but she needs Lalli's help." 

"Sigrun…" 

" _The bird_ is Tuuri." 

"Sigrun. She is _gone_. This is some leucistic tit that decided you were interesting. You had a fever dream to help you process her loss. It came as a shock to all of us, but you certainly were fondest of her out of all of us excepting Lalli.

"A tit, huh?" Sigrun snorted. "But no she's not, she isn't. I don't know how to prove it, but when we get her back you can apologize to us." 

She'd never heard Mikkel curse before. 

* * * 

In the end, Lalli did not return to them until they took a break to let Sigrun rest for the second stretch of the road for the day. Her pulse throbbed behind her eyes and she kept herself awake by force until her little mage came trotting out of the forest surrounding the motorway on the fjord's north shore at an exhausted clip and with shadowed eyes. 

Ignoring Mikkel's eye-rolling Sigrun grabbed a stick from the side of the road and blocked Lalli's beeline for Emil. She drew a line of waves into the snow and waited for him to react. 

Tuuri, coming fluttering after Lalli, chirped what sounded like a greeting. 

"Hey, Fuzzy-Head," Sigrun said, and pointing at the bird, said, "Tuuri." 

Lalli sighed, but at least it caught his attention. Sigrun raised the stick she was carrying, and broke it down the middle, ignoring the twinge in her arm. She broke it apart a few more times until her palms held so much kindling, wishing she could remember the name that Tuuri had told her about. It started with an L and it wasn't Lalli, but that was all that still came to her. It figured she'd forget the name, but at least she remembered the story. 

She scattered the sticks under the drawn waterline, knelt, and raked her fingers over the ground to gather the pieces of wood back up. Lalli frowned down at her, but something like recognition lit up his face, and he nodded slowly as she began to puzzle the pieces back together into a whole. For good measure, she made a stick figure of it. After all, the mother who'd fished her son's cut-up corpse out of the Finnish underworld river had put him back into a human shape as well. 

Finally, when she'd just started feeling stupid for trying to get the story across this way when so much hinged on it, Lalli crouched down by Sigrun. From the side of the camp, she could hear Emil mutter at Mikkel under his breath about how they'd both lost their minds.

Finally, Lalli said: "Lemminkäisen äiti." 

"Yes! Lemminkäisen, that was the name! It'd be easier if you didn't speak gibberish, but you're a smart Twig after all. I'll have to buy you cookies when we all get back."

"Lemminkäi _n_ en," Lalli said and fixed her with a look. "Äiti… mother?" He looked at Sigrun until she nodded.

"Äiti äiti," she said. "Äiti Lemminkäisen, äiti äiti Tuuri." At least their grandmother had had a name that was easier to keep in mind. "Ensi. _You_ call Ensi." 

Something unhappy passed Lalli's face, but he nodded again. "Okay." Then he slowly moved his finger through the air, first once, then a second time, and punctuating both by headshakes. "Not okay." 

"Uh… that's the bee that gets the life honey, and gets it wrong twice at first, right? Tuuri said she was going to go. I don't know where we'd get a bee from in the middle of winter, anyway, and she has wings right now, so… Tuuri. Ukko. We'll have to figure out how when we get there." 

Lalli rose and held open his hand. The bird - Tuuri, Sigrun reminded herself, not just any bird - landed in his palm with no hesitation, and Lalli lifted her up to his face and bowed his head. His face was dispassionate, and grey with exhaustion, but Sigrun swore that the edge of his mouth curved in a smile. 

"They _have_ in fact lost their minds," Mikkel informed Emil. 

Sigrun stuck her tongue out at them. 

* * * 

"You did it! I can't believe Lalli actually listened to you. I talked to him just now, and when we're on the ship and on the way to pick me up, you'll just have to convince them to let him have some time alone with me.

Jubilant, Tuuri pounced on Sigrun in the grass, and the breath went out of her for a second or five under Tuuri's bulk, but she laughed. 

"Do I get a kiss for that, or what?" 

Tuuri gave her more than one, and did not stop at that. 

* * *

The change in morale was palpable. 

Mikkel still did not believe them, and Emil remained doubtful in how he handled the bird, but Sigrun caught him slipping a handful of dried grass seeds off the long stalks poking through the snow at the edge of the road, holding them out for Tuuri to peck at, and muttering how it must be better than a days-old ration of Mikkel's cooking. Reynir let her ride on his head, and Sigrun almost felt a little jealous when she tugged the hair in place to build a nest in Reynir's thick mop. He, too, seemed better, although he anxiously refreshed the rune on the tent every now and then, and became restless especially at dusk, no matter how the bird seemed to try and distract him. 

Still, she came to Sigrun in the evenings, sleeping tucked tight against her. 

She slept better - and the dreams were nothing to sneeze at, not when they held sunshine, and her home, and Tuuri, and more than once she woke flushed, but knowing for certain it was no fever, and hoped that the bunch of men who also slept in the tent had noticed no evidence of Tuuri's weasellier tendencies on Sigrun. 

Seven days since Tuuri had died, and they veered off the motorway into a town called Hatting, to find the ancient train tracks that'd lead them close to Horsens harbour where the ship would be docking for them a week out. 

* * *

"Wait! Hold up! Reynir! What - " Emil had been the first to turn around and raise the alarm. 

A jumble of blocked roads off the railway track later, and they had gotten lost in Horsens. Sigrun reached up a hand for Tuuri, who twittered and anxiously beat her wings, swerved, and darted back down the road through the snowy grizzle that had started falling. Only just visible through it was Reynir's red hair some distance the way they had come; he stood tall staring at a building at the side of the road. 

"I will fetch him," Mikkel grumbled and set down the wheelbarrow with a sigh, but a heated exchange of Icelandic later, Mikkel waved the rest of them closer. The building that had stopped Reynir short was wedged in between others, a spire rising awkwardly to the side of it. 

Mikkel sounded pained. "Our young friend here insists that we must explore this church. He claims the… "ghosts"... he believes we met in Copenhagen are still on our trail, and that we will find the solution here in form of an old priest lady."

"Is that so?" Sigrun asked. "I didn't like them, especially not after they let those trolls loose on us. Come on, let's check this out, if it's nothing we'll head to the harbour tomorrow. It's not like we don't have the time for a quick look around. It's almost dark anyway, and I wouldn't mind a real roof over my head before we find the shelter tomorrow." 

She gave Lalli a look. He'd pushed to Reynir's side, and his eyes were unusually bright, his head held high like - Sigrun couldn't shake the image - a cat on the prowl. 

"Yeah, we're going in. Freckles, Mikkel, with me. Lalli stays with Emil and Tuuri."

Mikkel crowbarred open the gate for them, revealing a spacious, quiet interior. The pews - Sigrun thought that was what they were called - had been moved aside to house instead - pallets and pallets of dead people, all of them hooked up to some medical equipment that had long since stopped working, infusion bags and drips that hung empty. Her heart throbbed painfully, reminded again of the after-image she still tried to shake, sometimes when she was awake, of Tuuri in the tank, lying much like these people, and dead of the same causes - or nearly so. 

At least she could spot no evidence for troll activity. 

Behind her, Reynir gasped, but instead of letting the sight deter him he pushed past and raced to the apsis in the front of the building - a big altar with a cross. One of the stained-glass windows above it had shattered sometime after the end of the old word, lying in colourful shards across the floor.

Reynir shouted something at them. 

"'This is it,' he is saying," Mikkel translated. "He is very excited, and he says that he can finally go home now, instead of... running off with our remaining supplies once we found the rendezvous spot, and letting the ghosts chase him until he found this church on his own, rather than letting them eat us?" 

"Uhm," Sigrun said. Reynir smiled sheepishly at her and rubbed the back of his head. Embarrassment coloured his cheeks a bright pink. Mikkel massaged the bridge of his nose. 

"Tell him he needs to be done in the morning," Sigrun added after a moment. "I'm ready to get on that ship, too." 

* * *

Tuuri resisted the urge to tuck her head under her wing and go to sleep in her usual spot on Sigrun's shoulder, even though it was well after dark. 

A campfire from a broken pew was casting a flickering red light and heavy smoke up into the vaulted ceiling; Sigrun and Emil dozed; Kisu had curled against his side. Reynir was pacing, and Lalli had found the altar as a perch where he sat with his rifle over his knees. Mikkel had discovered a stash of books in the back rooms of the church, and sat leafing through them.

It was a moment Tuuri wished she could be human in, if only to have more to do than fly around and explore. Perhaps then she'd wrap around Sigrun and just stay warm and comfortable, rather than worry about how she was ever supposed to do what she'd need to do soon. Kootamoinen, Otava and Hetewanè… she remembered one night at the end of summer with her Grandma, lying on their backs on the roof of their house in Saimaa with Onni and Lalli, learning the lights in the sky, the constellations and stars, and their names. The moon, the Big Dipper and the Pleiades she all knew, but there was no way she could fly so far into the heavens; the seventh of them. She'd never reach Jumala and bring back the balm that'd let Grandma return her body to life. 

Instead she flew down to settle down against Sigrun after all, but that night she found nothing but her own formless, shapeless area when she had been able to slip into Sigrun's with barely any effort any night before. It had to be the church, she decided - the ancient God of the Old World and his son held sway there, and shadow-shapes moved at its edges. Once she thought she heard Reynir's voice from a distance, but she decided to wait until morning to find out what he wanted. 

When an old hand lifted Tuuri suddenly and without warning, and she looked at her reflection in a pair of glasses under a head of tight, slate-grey curls, she was too surprised to resist. 

"The last of the lost souls that boy brought me, are you? Come on, then, I am taking you home." 

White light surrounded her. 

* * * 

"Where _is_ she?!" Sigrun dropped her coat, seized it from the floor again, and shook. "She can't just be _gone_! She was meant to - !" 

Mikkel huffed, bent back over Reynir, and held a cup of warm broth to his lips to help him drink while Sigrun kicked the wheelbarrow, hissed at the pain that shot up her toes, and marched outside, taking a deep breath against the sorrow and fear that tightened around her throat like a noose. 

She didn't care that Reynir - with the help of an old lady who lived in the church, he said - had fought the ghosts and won, and exhausted himself so much that he could barely sit up on his own. In the chaos, Sigrun hadn't thought to check for Tuuri. She'd let her guard down again, and worse, she'd gone to bed the night before while Tuuri, inquisitive as ever, had been poking her fuzzy little feather-head into every nook and cranny of the old church. Anything could have happened, really, she reasoned. It didn't even have to be the ghosts who might have taken her. 

Again without a chance at goodbye.

Perhaps it hadn't even been Tuuri at all. Perhaps Mikkel had been right and it had been nothing but a strangely tame bird, but Sigrun chased off that thought like an irritating fly when Lalli stepped out of the church gate into the daylight, and squinted at the sky. 

"Tuuri?" he asked, forlorn. 

"I can't find her either, Lalli," Sigrun said, shaking her head for emphasis. "I'm sorry." 

* * *

The rumble of the ship's motor was one of the most irritating things Sigrun had ever heard.

When it had picked them up a week after the night in the church, she'd gone into her quarantine cell without protest, drew the curtains over the glass panel that separated her from Mikkel, and turned to the metal wall that made up the other side of her cell. At first she ignored his knocking on the glass, or the crackle of the intercom when he urged her to eat at dinnertime. There was barely any space to move there, three paces to and fro like a trapped animal, and the ship's medics were pumping her full of medication that was making her drowsy. Every thought of Tuuri made her stomach clench. 

No wonder she wasn't hungry. 

"I need your help, Sigrun," Mikkel's voice came staticky and rough from the loudspeaker in the wall. "Regardless of what you think happened… I would like to see Tuuri taken home if at all possible, but I fear I will not be able to persuade them alone." 

"Fuck you, Mikkel," Sigrun answered. The intercom clicked off. 

* * * 

"... no, I don't care to see her body, but she meant much to my team," Sigrun said to the medic who was sitting across her in a hazmat suit, holding a clipboard to protocol their conversation. The woman's eyes behind the glass face-plate were dark and round - a young medical officer, probably - and compassionate.

 _She didn't mean as much to them as she did to me,_ she added in her mind. "And as their Captain, I feel they deserve a chance to properly farewell a former team member - not to mention that her older brother is slated for passage from Øresund Base to Iceland. He has had no such chance, and is her last remaining next of kin, if I understand correctly."

The medic's pen flew over her paper. Sigrun wondered if - if they authorized the pickup - it would give her a chance to murder Mikkel for lying, telling the crew that she backed him up, and had authorized the retrieval of Tuuri's corpse, but halfway through an answer that would have landed him in trouble, she wondered if that'd really help her get anywhere. Maybe giving the rest of them what they needed could at least send her home with a clean slate. 

Maybe. 

She doubted that anything - anybody - except Tuuri would be able to do that for a very long time. 

* * *

The forest around Vejle had changed little since they had left. Not that Sigrun expected it to have done that, but it had been two weeks of harsh frost, and it seemed like something had suspended time in the shadow of the trees. The tank stood exactly where they had left it, the scorch marks proved their account, and even the snow still was still trampled with all their footsteps, covered only by a thin layer of rime from the trees. The sap on Lalli's marking-tree had frozen. 

One of the ship's officers followed her around and snapped photographs - as evidence for the Nordic Council, as he stated, treading uneasily and staying close to the ship's Icelandic mage who walked with her staff held like a weapon, in case any trolls suddenly appeared between the trees. Both were immune, but Sigrun wondered if either of them had ever so much as set a foot into the Silent World that hadn't been aboard the V/S Þór, and whether they ever would have if not to secure the area for the retrieval team.

Lalli stalked after them, until Sigrun blinked, and he disappeared between the trees; soon after she heard the surreptitious click of the tank's cockpit door opening. The Icelandic mage jumped and then frowned, and Sigrun quickly pointed out something else from the corner of her eye to draw the woman's attention - Tuuri's discarded mask in the snow. 

Oddly, even as she rambled nonsense about it, she couldn't help hoping. 

When wild, familiar twittering sounded through the trees and something white, no bigger than the palm of her hand, no bigger than her heart felt that moment, shot past her, toward the tank, she knew why. 

* * * 

Mikkel must have heard the bird - _Tuuri_ \- as well. He had been busy piling the books they had decided to leave in the tank's storage unit into the wheelbarrow to take to the ship, and while Sigrun still stood stunned, he ambled over and invited the two Icelanders to help him, giving Sigrun a look that was all apology. 

She slipped after Lalli, and for a moment thought she was seeing double. Tuuri's body rested in the arms of an old woman. Her hair, her posture and poise, expression and even the set of her mouth - everything but her tunic and fur cloak, were identical to Lalli's, who was kneeling next to her - she even spoke in the same half-whisper that her grandson used, when he talked at all.

Of course. Tuuri had told Sigrun all about her - one of the first mages, a powerful one at that, and the one who had sent Tuuri back from the underworld to find a way to return for good. Lalli must have called her, and Ensi Hotakainen had come. She rocked Tuuri in her arms, anointed her head, her face, throat and chest, her shoulder where the Rash had ravaged Tuuri's skin with some glowing ointment, chanting as she did. 

All that could mean - somehow, Tuuri had made it. Somehow, Tuuri had found Ukko's palace and brought with her the balm of life they needed. _Rocked her son to rest and comfort,_ Sigrun thought, repeating the verses that Tuuri had recited to her when she had first explained her plan in her dream-meadow near Dalsnes. _Rocked him to his former being, to his former life and spirit._

The words stuck in Sigrun's head like hope. 

The world blurred before her eyes. Around Tuuri and Ensi a light grew, wings beat once and then folded into Tuuri's chest, setting her aglow. 

Then, for a heartbeat, nothing. The world hung in complete stillness, until Tuuri came out of the rising light and hurled herself at Sigrun like she still had wings, laughing like she still was a bird.

**Author's Note:**

> Oof, where do I start? The title is from Ted Kooser's [Screech Owl](https://jitterbuggingforjesus.com/2009/08/15/the-yellow-oak-of-her-little-house-from-the-poetry-of-ted-kooser/), but the poem has no relevance to the story otherwise. 
> 
> The mention of Kielo is a quick shout-out to aRTD. Her association with the Swan was too tempting to resist.
> 
> There's a lot of Finnish mythology, or something like it, in this, and I feel I should probably apologize to any Finn reading this. I'm very indebted to L., who was patient and lovely about all my strange questions. The Kalevala verses Sigrun remembered are from the [Crawford translation](http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/kveng/), Rune XV: Lemminkäinen's Restoration, which also was the rough blueprint for Tuuri's resurrection, and _Lemminkäisen Äiti_ is a painting dealing with the same subject (no, Sigrun doesn't know about Finnish genitive formation rules). 
> 
> Lalli's moment at the Karsikko tree was one of those spooky instances featuring accidental creator channeling, it was written before the chapter cover went live (albeit on the same day as a late addition to the fic). All I had to still do was to make Lalli kneel. 
> 
> Finally, many thanks to K. for her open ears and comfort while I was yowling about this fic to her.


End file.
